The UberAIR taxi project is a partner with the US Army laboratory.

via:博客园 time:2018/8/10 18:33:14 readed:138

According to foreign media reports on August 10, Uber Elevate has just established partnerships with Austin, Texas, and the US Army Research Labs. As part of its UberAIR Flying Car project, the idea is to create a city-based public air transport network. Uber Elevate plans to begin testing in three cities by 2020, including Los Angeles and Dallas, two indigenous U.S. cities, while the other will be selected internationally. If all goes according to plan, UberAIR's flying car project will start in 2023.

The new partnership was first announced by University of Texas-Austin. The agency said it would cooperate with Uber Elevate and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory on the basis of the UberAIR project in the future. For Uber, the new rotor technology currently being developed by the company can be used in future vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, also known as VTOL.

Uber expects to launch at least one VTOL vehicle in the network that can cruise at speeds of 150 to 200 miles per hour at altitudes of 1,000 to 2,000 feet. According to Uber, the current speed of the aircraft is 60 miles per hour, and it needs to be improved.

According to the introduction of the university, stacked rotor design is used in the existing preliminary conceptual design, and this design is also better than the traditional design to enhance the overall performance and versatility of the aircraft.

Although it sounds like flying cars belong to the future concept. But VTOL vertical takeoff and landing vehicles are still very important in some big international cities with heavy traffic. By flying in the air, city dwellers and tourists can experience faster speeds than cars on short trips without paying the high cost of traditional air travel. A Uber VTOL flying car, for example, can reduce the one-hour ground journey to just 10 minutes, saving 50 minutes.